There are many elements that seem to set Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan apart from other Disney remakes, but two of them stand out the most: it’s not a musical, and it doesn’t feature any of the wacky sidekicks that made the 1998 animated film so beloved.

While the live-action remake directed by Niki Caro seems to take the serious war epic approach to the story of Fa Mulan, the Chinese folk hero and Disney heroine, producer Jason Reed teased to /Film during a visit to the set of Mulan that some of the elements of the beloved 1998 animated film will make their way into the film. You might just have to go on the hunt for them.

During a visit to the Mulan set, Reed said that while the live-action film “will not be a traditional ‘break into [song] musical,” there will be “songs you recognize and remember in the movie.” Reed said:

“We’re trying to keep some of our tricks a secret. However I can guarantee you that there will be songs you recognize and remember in the movie. It will not be traditional break into musical. They’re not going to stop their workouts and do a big musical number to camera. However, there are a number of songs that are iconic for the movie and tell a great version of the story and they are very helpful to us in how we’re putting the movie together. And it gets a little easier in animation to keep the tension and the reality in place and still have people break into song and sing to camera. We made the decision that we wanted to keep the world – even though it’s a fantasy — more grounded more realistic so those emotions really played and the threat is very real so we are using music in a slightly different way.”

As for the animated sidekicks, those will be incorporated in the film in a more subtle way. Reed confirmed that Mushu will not be in the film (“you’re never gonna compete with Eddie Murphy doing his schtick” he said), but that Cri-Kee, the lucky cricket who got Mulan out of — and into — scrapes in the animated film, will appear this time as a human. Newcomer Jun Yu will be playing “Cricket,” an archer in the Chinese infantry.

Osborne added, “There’s an allusion to [Mushu], or a metaphor for that, in a way, that relates to her ancestors and her ancestry. So that’s definitely in the movie. Whether you see all her ancestors come alive, you’ll have to watch the movie and see. But there is a reference to that.”

But as for actual sidekicks, “there will be a mythological sidekick of sorts in the movie,” Reed teased. Perhaps it is the character played by Gong Li, a witch who teams up with Jason Scott Lee‘s villainous Rouran invader Bori Khan, and whose talons on her fingers are eerily similar to that of a falcon? The villain in the animated Mulan, Shan Yu, had a falcon sidekick.

“The witch has sort of this sorcerer background which allows her to shape shift,” Lee revealed. “And I think that’s how that guardian spirit animal is gonna come into play.”

Mulan hits theaters on March 27, 2020. Tickets are on sale now.

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